Jade (and, Briefly, The Line)
by no exits
Summary: Tori and Jade were more than love, more than the most beautiful of phrases, more tragic and lonely and perfect than the most desperate of love songs. -jade/tori


**AN.** Listen to 'Miles Behind Me' by Hotel Lights. The rating is for language and adult themes, but this isn't anywhere close to a PWP. Sorry. Some other time, maybe.

* * *

"Things that we worried about then, when patience had run thin.

Laughed when we wanted to hide on different sides of the line." -_Hotel Lights_

* * *

The invitation came in the mail a week early. It was addressed to Trina Vega, and Tori, the latter's name scrawled in unkempt writing (Jade's). It fell into Tori's lap, offhandedly thrown by Trina. It took Tori a total of five times to scan and fully understand the first line, and then, she took the rest of the hour to consider the information contained in the rest of the letter. Her mind buzzed and her heart paused in her chest every time her fingers brushed against the paper. Her eyes closed and she tried to think. She tried to push the troublesome thoughts out of her head. But at this point, they were not thoughts but knowledge – the letter's words were imprinted upon her brain, probably forever. Forever. Her heart stilled once more, and her mind strayed with her eyes, resting on the letter held daintily in her lap. _Hope you can come._

"You're gonna wanna fly back home for her wedding, aren't you?" It wasn't a question.

"I don't really have a choice."

Trina humphed. "Everyone has a choice."

Tori's smile was bitter. "I promise that's not true."

[+]

Approximately seventy-two hours later they were on a plane. It took five hours to reach Los Angeles. From there, the drive to their parent's house was nothing. Tori greeted her parents (yes, yes, I've been doing fine, everything's almost recorded -) and then retreated to her room. It had been converted to a guest room since she'd left, but a few of her old posters still clung to the walls, and if she closed her eyes she could imagine she was seventeen and in love with life. Only when she opened her eyes did she remember that seventeen was a lie, and eighteen was Jade, nineteen and twenty too, and Jade West was getting married, twenty-one.

She let herself lie in bed and think.

[+]

"You're going to wear _that_?" Trina looked down at her sister's blue dress in exaggerated horror.

"Yes," Tori replied.

Trina nodded, mulling the idea over for a split second. "Well, it's hideous. Where's the red dress you were looking at before we left?"

"New York, where I left it." Tori spread her fingers out across her own waist as she inspected the dress she had on. It wasn't _so_ bad. "I like blue."

"You love red. You looked better in the red." Trina left and Tori turned to face herself in the mirror. She broadened her shoulders and breathed in deeply, inspecting her reflection. She liked blue. Blue was...nice.

[+]

It was the rehearsal dinner, and that was nice, too, but the thing was, Jade looked good in white. Jade looked _really_ good in white, and every time she was sure Andre and Robbie were distracted, she stole a glance her way just to see. It didn't help that she'd never seen Jade happier in her life, not that there was much contest for that. She was positively beaming at everyone who passed her and greeting people Tori didn't even know. She knew there was no place for jealousy so petty as this, but she couldn't help but become infatuated with the thought that Jade should not be allowed to speak with anyone who wasn't her husband-to-be for the entirety of the night. He'd already stolen her away to a completely different world; to see her conversing with others from this world Tori had no part in only pained her further. She looked away.

The hours passed, and Tori's palms shook. Jade had been occupied for most of the night, speaking with faces she could not recognize (Tori desperately wished Cat had been able to attend, so as to offer her some familiar, if strange, comfort).

Andre and Robbie left, and Trina had bolted an hour after the occasion's beginning, which meant that Tori was alone. She'd read somewhere that being alone in a crowd was the worst place to be alone at all. She knew that was wrong. The worst place to be alone was in a sea of strangers and, somewhere, someone who looked a lot like the girl she loved.

"Tori Vega."

She was too surprised to feel the pick-up of her heart.

"Alexander," she greeted, miraculously managing not to trip over her words. (Could he tell she'd been thinking of his fiance?) "It's...hi. I'm glad we could, well, finally meet in person."

"Yeah," he agreed, retracting his hand. Tori realized he'd been offering it to her for a shake. "Jade's been so stressed by all this...It's nice she decided to meet up with some of her old friends...you know how she is, always a perfectionist."

As it turned out, Tori did not know these things, but she nodded along still. "Yes."

"Between you and me," he lowered his voice, "I think she's been nervous about seeing Beck Oliver. I hear they were pretty serious, for high school, at least. I'm sure there are memories there."

Cold February nights clouded Tori's vision.

"Yes." She cleared her throat and bit her lower lip. "But, uh, I don't think that's a problem. Beck couldn't make it. I'm sure he called." She smiled in shaky reassurance. "There's...nothing to worry about."

"Oh." He frowned.

"Something wrong?"

"No, no. She just told me – well. No matter." Tori knew very well when someone was hiding something, and at the moment, Alexander was. "Anyway, I met your sister earlier."

Tori sighed. "I'm sorry."

[+]

By the end of the night, half of the remaining crowd was piss-drunk, something that Tori could expect from only Jade West's rehearsal dinner. She was of the sober half, since she was the only one who could drive herself home at this point. (She would have left long before midnight, had it not been for the way Jade had yet to speak to her and somewhere in the back of her mind Tori was sure she was being avoided.)

She wondered from group to group, staying for varying amounts of time, on a fruitless search for the bride-to-be. In her search, she found the fiance instead.

"Hi, again." Alexander hiccuped.

"Have you seen Jade?"

"She left." He frowned and made a move closer to Tori before closing his eyes and shaking his head. Tori didn't notice.

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, forcing everything out of her mind. She couldn't think. She couldn't let herself be convinced that Jade was avoiding her...she couldn't. Hope hurt too much.

"...boyfriend of hers, who the HELL does he think he is?" It occurred to Tori that Alexander was still talking, or rather, rambling, to her.

"_You're_ her boyfriend," she pointed out. "Fiance, I guess."

"That's what I said! But it's no use...she won't tell me nothing anymore. She's always been closed off, y'know? So dark and quiet and, damn it, she's so lovely. Pretty." He hummed. "Astonishing body, face, and she's just a great girl. I love her." He shoved his ringed-finger into Tori's face. "I _love_ her!"

"Okay." The conversation was becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Tori, whose interest in staying had diminished to nothing upon hearing that Jade was no longer around. "Are you drunk, Alexander?"

"Alex, and no, dear. I'm completely hammered."

"Do you have a ride?" Alexander waved her off.

"I know everyone here...I'll get a ride."

"If you say so. Sorry, but I really have to -"

"You don't think she's sleeping with someone else, do you?"

Tori's heart caught in her throat. "W – who?"

"Jade! My wife!"

"Fiance," Tori corrected, for the second time in their brief conversation.

"I think she's seeing someone behind my back."

"She's not."

"How can you be sure?"

"She's not. I've known Jade for too long to think she'd ever do that to anyone. No offense," she added, realizing too late that her remark seemed like a jab at him.

"None taken." Something told Tori he hadn't the slightest clue of why he should be offended.

"She's cruel sometimes, but she's not evil."

"That's why I invited you," Alexander admitted a few moments later. "I thought...I thought it was that Beck bloke."

Tori's head spun for a moment and she clutched at the table she stood beside. Her breath remained clouded in her throat, her surroundings momentarily dizzy as she tried to process what she'd been told. "You thought I could...distract her from Beck?" She clarified, her eyes pitifully searching his hazy ones. _He knew, he knew, he had to know -_

"I thought you could distract Beck."

Oh.

"...how the two of you almost hooked up. If it hadn't been for her, you would've. You're welcome."

She felt the sudden need to be anywhere but here, in the dining hall where she'd spent the past five hours of her life pretending she was okay with any of this.

"I have to go." Without further explanation, Tori bolted from his side, rushing out the front doors and stumbling to collapse against the brick wall beside. She leaned her head against the warm bricks and closed her eyes, breathing steadily in to the sound of cicadas. Cicadas came in the Summer, they always came in the summer, and Tori always hated them; they were loud and irritating, and if you heard them, there was a one-hundred percent chance you were burning up. She much preferred Winter, when her footprints got lost in the snow, and her breath was collected by some invisible force, and February, when everything she knew was passion and JadeJadeJade.

[+]

_Her finger traced across Tori's collarbone lazily, a tickle at her veins becoming a shiver down her spine as Jade punctuated her journey with warm, open-mouthed kisses. Tori arched further into Jade's body, rocking against her, though she knew the gesture was not nearly sexual enough to evoke such a strong reaction. It was the little things that unwound Tori when Jade was around; the way she looked at her when she thought Tori wasn't looking, the way her eyelashes fluttered across her neck when Jade was marking her there, the way her fingers combed through her hair painstakingly slow so as to ensure there was no pain. The way Jade breathed. The way Jade smiled in her presence, far away from the rest of the world, and for no one but Tori; it was her Tori-smile, as she's so vainly named it many nights ago when she fell in love with Jade West._

_ They had made love twice now, but they'd kissed one-hundred times more, and Tori's fingers had mapped the points from her fingertips to Jade's knuckle one-million more than that. She'd memorized the way Jade looked with her guard down, when she wasn't being cruel with a purpose, but being calm and in love with no real reason for it at all. If anything, their relationship – their – well, whatever it was, was without any rhyme or reason. Tori Vega and Jade West were not alike in name, and they stood on two different sides of the line. They were not forbidden as such lovers as Romeo and Juliet; they were not welcomed as Jade and Beck had always been. They were comfortably in-between, in Tori's bedroom, where stolen kisses meant everything and they had nothing but time._

_ Tori was not inherently poetic, nor was Jade, to a more extreme extent. When Tori had sat herself down one February night with the intention of writing an ode dedicated to her love, she'd stumbled over her words. When she was with Jade, her perfectly well-thought feelings were punctuated with "uhms" and incoherent mumblings. In her head the feelings associated with Jade were a haze, settling comfortably over everything else she ever did. Speaking with Andre reminded her of Jade; going to class reminded her of Jade; seeing Jade reminded her of Jade, with reason, and the nights they'd spent together. But on any given day Tori felt the desire to articulate such a feeling, the words were never just right. "I love you" was not adequate. She loathed the thought of Beck's lips mouthing the same words into Jade's skin ages ago, when she was his alone. Love was a foolish thing that belonged to Beck and Jade. Tori and Jade were more than love, more than the most beautiful of phrases, more tragic and lonely and perfect than the most desperate of love songs. No words she'd ever heard before encompassed that which needed to be said, and for that she was grateful. The feeling they shared was a secret to the world and each other, fueling the desire that sparked between them. The words acted as a barrier that spurred on the illusion of their situation. Jade West, in name, was the most beautiful thing Tori could ever know._

_ But she had never been hers in name._

_ "Tori," Jade hissed, fingers pushing into the skin of Tori's shoulders. "Tori, oh, I lo-"_

_ "Don't." She whispered, her heart racing. Her mind clouded with the view of Jade's naked body before her, mixed with the reality of words that had nearly slipped from her perfect lips._

_ "Don't?" She repeated. Her dazed look from before hardened. "Why?"_

_ "Don't," Tori answered. The words still escaped her. She pushed herself away from Jade and suddenly wished that she could draw the covers around her own exposed body. "Just...please. Don't."_

_ Seconds passed and Tori's eyes remained trained down. Jade's gaze was furious enough that her cheeks burned with the intensity of her scrutiny._

_ "You _idiot._" Tori winced. "I can't believe you, Vega. You're – _what the hell_?" As she demanded the words, she nearly fell out of the bed in a scramble for her garments, strewn across the room. "Honestly, what the fuck? You keep inviting me over and fucking looking at me like – like _that_ – and then you're always looking at me in class, too, before this all started, even. And you act like you're so tipsy half of the time, just like looking at me has you drunk or some dumb shit, and guess what, it shouldn't be surprised that us fucking isn't enough for me." She spat out the curses, each one of them harder than the last. Tori remained stock-still on the sheets, eyes wide and her heart unsteadily pounding. "And you know it's hard for me to open up to people, especially a dumbass like you. I hated you, do you get that? I. Hated. You. And then you changed that, God knows how, you made me think that you actually cared about – shit, whatever this is, well, like I even care." Jade finished pulling on her boots, her bra hanging from her hands. She was in a rush to leave._

_ "It's not..." Tori whimpered._

_ "It's not what?" Jade demanded. "'It's not' like we were dating? You think I don't fucking know that? I do. I get that. It was just sex to you. Okay. Good. Now we can get on with our lives." She stood by the door and opened it, quirking one last eyebrow at Tori. Giving her a chance._

_ She cleared her throat, still averting her eyes. "See you...Monday?"_

_ There was a pause._

_ "Go to Hell," Jade muttered. The door slammed._

[+]

Somewhere between remembering their last night together and Jade leaving, Tori had stumbled into her car. She cried onto the steering wheel in the parking lot of Jade's rehearsal dinner as the radio played quietly and dutifully in the background. She recognized the song. It was something Jade used to play for her late at night, when the window was open and they sat on the sill looking out at Tori's view of Los Angeles. It wasn't Jade's normal sound, much more somber and acoustic, and when Jade had played it for her, she'd get uncharacteristically bashful.

(_"It's...different," she had told Tori._) She sobbed into the space between her fingers, digging her nails into the wheel and hissing at the pain.

It took ten minutes for her to regain control herself, the drifting sound of drunken conversations stirring her. Tori started the car and pulled quickly out of the lot, her eyes trained forward as the song switched and burned her ears.

[+]

Jade West said 'I Do' and married Alexander with a smile on her face. An hour after the ceremony, Tori had found the bar. She sat alone, one of the only sitting souls in a mess of dancing and frivolity. Her eyes scanned the crowd, but she stopped herself before she could spot the newly-weds. She wasn't that much of a masochist.

Or, perhaps she was. It took quite the masochist to fall head over heels for Jade West.

She left the bar, too sober to handle the rest of the celebration. She had to leave.

She left the chapel and walked to the street, sticking her thumb in the air to hail a cab. She stood for a minute before she could tell she was no longer alone. She turned and looked straight into blue eyes.

"Jade." Her voice cracked on part of the alcohol in her system.

"You look like shit," blue-eyes, Jade, observed.

"The invitation said there were free drinks."

"I'm talking about your dress." Tori looked down to the blue dress. "You look better in red."

Different responses flooded her mind, but instead of settling for one she simply said, "I know." And then, "congrats."

Jade didn't reply, but turned to the street. "Leaving?"

"I was."

"Cabs don't come around here. You're going to have to wait, Princess Vega." The term was clearly meant to be taken as an insult, but it only brought memories of other endearing terms to her mind. The corners of her lips tugged further down, and she couldn't find the strength to speak, or even look at Jade. Three years and she still couldn't look at Jade when she needed to. "It's rude to leave a wedding early, anyway."

"It's not like you want me here."

"True," Jade said quickly. "But Alexander invited you, which means you're here until the end of it. Bitching about it is not going to get you anywhere."

"I'm not _bitching_ about anything, Jade -"

"Language, Vega." Jade shot her a glance, and for a moment, what seemed eerily close to a small smile flickered to her lips. "You've changed since we last talked."

"You too. You're married now."

"I hate this conversation." Jade crossed her arms and turned so her back was facing Tori; the gesture was misread by Tori, who found that Jade closely resembled a pouting toddler. She was stuck between a smile and a frown, and settled on biting her lower lip instead of acting upon either. Her eyebrows furrowed down. "Why did you come, if you're so anxious to leave?"  
Tori blinked. "Are you serious?" She shook her head. "Jade...I'm not going to block you out of my life forever."

"You seemed to be doing a pretty good damn job of it before today."

"The rehearsal." Tori racked her mind for things to say. "I tried to talk to you..."

"Oh, my God! That makes it all _so_ much better. After three years, three days is the real deal breaker!"

"Do you know how hard this is for me?" Tori demanded, finally snapping. She spun Jade forcefully around to face her, eyes burning. "Seeing you like this? You think I like having to deal with everything that happened? To know that this could have been – that I never gave us the full chance we deserve? You don't think I beat myself up enough _every single day_ because I made one mistake? I tried to forgive myself. I can't. Which really sucks, since I didn't screw the entire world. I made one slip-up. I got scared. I didn't know how to deal with everything – with you – and so I screwed up, okay? Can you deal with that now, or not? Because last time I checked, you're married to Alexander McWhateverWhoCares, we're adults, and you're still treating me like a scared little high-schooler who didn't have the guts to tell you I...I lo -"

"Don't," Jade said forcefully, pushing Tori's hand off her shoulder.

"Don't?"

"_Don't_," she repeated icily, before pulling Tori into a hard and bracing kiss. Down the road, Tori liked to say that she at least momentarily paused, that she stopped herself from pushing forward back into her old habits with a taken woman. But this wasn't an act of betrayal, because Jade was _hers_, perhaps not in name but in everything else. She desperately grabbed hold of Jade's shoulders, fingers digging into her skin as she kissed back. Jade moaned against her lips and parted them, urging Tori to explore her mouth with her tongue. The kiss was warm and wet and everything Tori had missed about February.

Jade pulled away. "We can't."

Tori stepped back as her eyes widened, arms clenching at her side. "Jade...I didn't mean to -"

"No," Jade continued, rolling her eyes. "Not that. We can't do this _here_."

"Okay." It wasn't even a surprise to Tori when Jade took her arm, fingers surely leaving bruises at the tight grip she executed. She stuck her thumb in the air with purpose. "I thought you said cabs don't come around here."

"I also said you look like shit."

Tori quirked an eyebrow. "Is that a compliment?"

She snorted. "No. That dress is God-awful. But you, no, you look...not shitty."

A cab circled to their location, and by the time they'd fallen inside Jade's mouth was open and hot against Tori's, and the driver would forever have the beautiful tale of the runaway bride and her slutty, badly-dressed companion.

* * *

**AN.** I'm unsure of how I feel about this as a whole; there are bits I like quite well (in particular the flashback) and others that I feel aren't done well (the ending). I figured that instead of letting myself tear my hair out as it sits in my drafts, I'd release it to the world and see what I get in return.

Feedback is appreciated, constructive and of other varieties. Thanks for reading.


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